To the sweet-gale meadow or swamp up Assabet.

December 31. 

Thermometer at 7.45 a. m., -1°, yet even more vapor is rising from the open water below my boat's place than on the 29th, when it was -15°. 

The wind is southwesterly, i. e. considerably south of west. This shows that fog over the water is a phenomenon of the morning chiefly, as well in winter as in summer. You will see a fog over the water in a winter morning, though the temperature may be considerably higher than at midday when no fog is seen. 

There has evidently been a slight fog generally in the night, and the trees are white with it. The crystals are directed southwesterly, or toward the wind. I think that these crystals are particularly large and numerous, and the trees (willows) particularly white, next to the open water spaces, where the vapor even now is abundantly rising. 

Is this fog in the night occasioned by the cold earth condensing the moisture which a warmer wind has brought to us?

At 10 a. m., thermometer 18°.

December 30, 2018

I see no vapor from the water. 

Crows yesterday flitted silently, if not ominously, over the street, just after the snow had fallen, as if men, being further within, were just as far off as usual. This is a phenomenon of both cold weather and snowy. You hear nothing; you merely see these black apparitions, though they come near enough to look down your chimney and scent the boiling pot, and pass between the house and barn. 

Just saw moved a white oak, Leighton's, some five inches in diameter, with a frozen mass of earth some five or five and a half feet in diameter and two plus thick. It was dug round before the frost, — a trench about a foot wide and filled with stalks, etc., — and now pried up with levers till on a level with the ground, then dragged off. It would not have cost half so much if a sloping path had been dug to it on one side so that the drag could have been placed under it in the hole and another dug at the hole it was removed to, — unless the last were planked over and it was dragged on to it. 

They were teaming ice before sunrise (from Sam Barrett's Pond) on the morning of the 29th, when the thermometer was 16 or 20 degrees below. Cold work, you would say. Yet some say it is colder in thawing weather, if you have to touch the ice. 

P. M. — To the sweet-gale meadow or swamp up Assabet. 

I notice that one or more of the terminal leafets remain on the branches of the flowering fern commonly. 

See where probably a shrike (do I ever see a small hawk in winter ?) has torn a small bird in pieces and its slate-colored down and its feathers have been blown far and wide over the snow. 

There is a great deal of hemlock scales scattered over the recent snow (at the Hemlocks), evidently by birds on the trees, and the wind has blown them south east, — scales, seeds, and cones, — and I see the tracks of small birds that have apparently picked the seeds from the snow also. It may have been done by gold finches. I see a tree sparrow hopping close by, and perhaps they eat them on the snow. Some of the seeds have blown at least fifteen rods southeast. So the hemlock seed is important to some birds in the winter. 

All the sound witch-hazel nuts that I examine are empty. 

How vain to try to teach youth, or anybody, truths ! They can only learn them after their own fashion, and when they get ready. I do not mean by this to condemn our system of education, but to show what it amounts to. A hundred boys at college are drilled in physics and metaphysics, languages, etc. There may be one or two in each hundred, prematurely old perchance, who approaches the subject from a similar point of view to his teachers, but as for the rest, and the most promising, it is like agricultural chemistry to so many Indians. They get a valuable drilling, it may be, but they do not learn what you profess to teach. They at most only learn where the arsenal is, in case they should ever want to use any of its weapons. The young men, being young, necessarily listen to the lec turer in history, just as they do to the singing of a bird.

They expect to be affected by something he may say. It is a kind of poetic pabulum and imagery that they get. Nothing comes quite amiss to their mill. 

I think it will be found that he who speaks with most authority on a given subject is not ignorant of what has been said by his predecessors. He will take his place in a regular order, and substantially add his own knowledge to the knowledge of previous generations. 

The oblong-conical sterile flower-buds or catkins of the sweet-gale, half a dozen at the end of each black twig, dark-red, oblong-conical, spotted with black, and about half an inch long, are among the most interesting buds of the winter. The leaf-buds are comparatively minute. The white edges of their scales and their regular red and black colors make the imbrication of the bud very distinct. The sterile and fertile flowers are not only on distinct plants, but they commonly grow in distinct patches. Sometimes I detect the one only for a quarter of a mile, and then the other begins to prevail, or both may be found together. It grows along the wet edge of banks and the river and in open swamps. 

The mulleins are full of minute brown seeds, which a jar sprinkles over the snow, and [they] look black there; also the primrose, of larger brown seeds, which rattle out in the same manner. 

One of the two large docks, perhaps obtusifolius, commonly holds its seeds now, but they are very ready to fall. (Mainly one-seeded; vide three-ribbed goldenrod meadow.) 

There appears to be not much (compared with the fall) seed left on the common or gray goldenrod, its down being mostly gone, and the seed is attached to that.

Potentilla Norvegica appears to have some sound seed in its closed heads. 

The very gray flattish heads of the calamint are quite full of minute dark-brown seed. 

The conical heads of the cone-flower also are full of long blackish seeds. Both the last drop their seeds on being inverted and shaken. 

I see also the yellow lily (L. Canadense) pods with its three now gray divisions spreading open like the petals of a flower, and more than half the great red flattish triangularish or semicircularish seeds gone. The pod boys throw with a humming sound. 

Even the sidesaddle-flower, where it shows its head above the snow, now gray and leathery, dry, is covered beneath its cap with pretty large close-set light-brown seeds. 

I see one or more sedges with seeds yet, one apparently the Carex debilis, if it is not flava? 

A man may be old and infirm. What, then, are the thoughts he thinks? what the life he lives? They and it are, like himself, infirm. But a man may be young, athletic, active, beautiful. Then, too, his thoughts will be like his person. They will wander in a living and beautiful world. If you are well, then how brave you are! How you hope! You are conversant with joy! A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as his brain. We exaggerate the importance and exclusiveness of the headquarters. Do you suppose they were a race of consumptives and dyspeptics who in vented Grecian mythology and poetry? The poet's words are, "You would almost say the body thought!" I quite say it. I trust we have a good body then.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 31, 1859

Thermometer at 7.45 a. m., -1°, yet even more vapor is rising from the open water . . . wind is southwesterly, i. e. considerably south of west. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The weather, New Year's Eve

There has evidently been a slight fog generally in the night, and the trees are white with it. The crystals are directed southwesterly, or toward the wind. See December 31, 1855 ("It is one of the mornings of creation, and the trees, shrubs, etc., etc., are covered with a fine leaf frost, as if they had their morning robes on, seen against the sun. There has been a mist in the night . . . This accounts for the frost on the twigs. It consists of minute leaves, the longest an eighth of an inch, all around the twigs, but longest commonly on one side, in one instance the southwest side.")

Crows yesterday flitted silently, if not ominously, over the street. See December 15, 1855 ("How like a bird of ill omen the crow behaves!") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

They were teaming ice before sunrise (from Sam Barrett's Pond) on the morning of the 29th, when the thermometer was 16 or 20 degrees below. See  January 10, 1859 ("At Sam Barrett’s Pond, where Joe Brown is now get ting his ice, I think I see about ten different freezings in ice some fifteen or more inches thick. Perhaps the successive cold nights might be discovered recorded in each cake of ice."); January 30, 1854 (Sometimes one of those great cakes of green ice from Walden or Sam Barrett's Pond slips from the ice-man's sled in the street and lies there like a great emerald, an object of interest to all travellers)

There is a great deal of hemlock scales scattered over the recent snow (at the Hemlocks), evidently by birds on the trees. See January 14, 1857 ("Up Assabet on ice . . . Hemlock seeds are scattered over the snow."); January 20, 1860 ("The snow and ice under the hemlocks is strewn with cones and seeds and tracked with birds and squirrels. What a bountiful supply of winter food is here provided for them!") See also November 1. 1853 ("As I paddle under the Leaning Hemlocks, the breeze rustles the boughs, and showers of their fresh winged seeds come wafted down to the water and are carried round and onward in the great eddy there.") and note to October 13, 1859 ("The hemlock seed is now in the midst of its fall, some of it, with the leaves, floating on the river. The cones, being thus expanded, are more conspicuous on the trees.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, at the Leaning Hemlocks

Sweet-gale grows along the wet edge of banks and the river and in open swamps. See November 29, 1857 (" Going through a partly frozen meadow . . .i, scraping through the sweet-gale, I am pleasantly scented with its odoriferous fruit."); December 19, 1850 ("I find the sweet-gale (Myrica) by the river also."); December 14, 1850 ("I find a low, branching shrub frozen into the edge of the ice, with a fine spicy scent . . .. When I rub the dry-looking fruit in my hands, it feels greasy and stains them a permanent yellow, which I cannot wash out. It lasts several days, and my fingers smell medicinal. I conclude that it is sweetgale, and we name the island Myrica Island."); January 31, 1854 ("In the winter, when there are no flowers and leaves are rare, even large buds are interesting and somewhat exciting. I go a-budding like a partridge. I am always attracted at this season by the buds of the swamp-pink, the poplars, and the sweet-gale.");  February 9, 1854 ("I have brought home some alder and sweet-gale and put them in water.") See also April 13, 1860 (“It distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came against my will, as it were, to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting.”) and note to April 30, 1852 ("The sweet gale is in blossom.")

The sidesaddle-flower, where it shows its head above the snow. Sarracenia purpurea, also known as the purple pitcherplant or northern pitcher plant, the only pitcherplant native to New England. See note to June 12, 1856 ("Sidesaddle flower numerously out now.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

The poet's words are, "You would almost say the body thought!" I quite say it. See November 9, 1851 ("Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought -- with these I deal."); See also September 2, 1851 ("Expression is the act of the whole man.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, A body awake in the world.

Elegy on Mistress Elizabeth Drury

By John Donne (1572–1631)

SHE, of whose soul, if we may say, ’twas gold, Her body was the Electrum, and did hold Many degrees of that; we understood Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,         5 That one might almost say, her body thought.

Below zero. ice forming/ Open places on the river.between Carlisle Bridge and Nut Meadow Brook

December 29

A very cold morning, — about -15° at 8 a. m. at our door. 

I went to the river immediately after sunrise. I could [see] a little greenness in the ice, and also a little rose-color from the snow, but far less than before the sun set. Do both these phenomena require a gross atmosphere? Apparently the ice is greenest when the sun is twenty or thirty minutes above the horizon. 

From the smooth open place behind Cheney's a great deal of vapor was rising to the height of a dozen feet or more, as from a boiling kettle. This, then, is a phenomenon of quite cold weather. I did not notice it yesterday afternoon. These open places are a sort of breathing-holes of the river. 

When I look toward the sun, now that they are smooth, they are hardly to be distinguished from the ice. Just as cold weather reveals the breath of a man, still greater cold reveals the breath of, i. e. warm, moist air over, the river. 

I collect this morning the little shining black seeds of the amaranth, raised above the snow in its solid or dense spike. 

P. M. — To Ball's Hill, skating. 

Walked back, measuring the river and ice by pacing. The first open place in the main stream in Concord, or no doubt this side Carlisle Bridge, coming up stream, were: — 

• 1st, Holt Ford, 10 rods by 1 (extreme width). 
• 2d, east side Holt Bend, near last, 8 by 1 1/2. 
• 3d, west side Holt Bend (midway), 3 by 1/2. (On the 28th it must have been open nearly all round to Holt Bend.) 
• 4th, Barrett's Bar, 42 rods by 6 at west end, where it reaches 12 rods above ford; extends down the north side very narrow to the rock and only little way down the south side; can walk in middle half-way. 
• 5th, a bar above Monument, 10 by 3. 
• 6th, from Hunt's Bridge to Island, or say 54 rods by 4. 
• 7th, from 8 below willow-row to 5 below boat's place, or 80+ rods by 3. 

This as far as I looked to-day, but no doubt the next was : — 

• 8th, just above ash tree, probably three or four rods long. 
• 10th, Clamshell Bend. 
• 11th, below Nut Meadow, probably two or three rods long.
• 
  

This is the last in Concord. (I do not include the small openings which are to be found now at bridges.) [Feb. 15, 1860, when the river was much more open than Dec. 29, 1859, it was scarcely open at the narrowest place above Bound Rock, only puffed up in the channel, and the first decided opening was at Rice's Bend; all below Bound Rock to Fair Haven Pond, etc., was quite solid. Hence the statements above are true.]

The longest opening is that below my boat's place; next, at junction next Barrett's Bar; next, either Clamshell or Hubbard's Bath. But for area of water that below the junction is considerably the largest of all.

When I went to walk it was about 10° above zero, and when I returned, 1°. I did not notice any vapor rising from the open places, as I did in the morning, when it was -16° and also  -6°. Therefore the cold must be between +1° and -6° in order that vapor may rise from these places. 

It takes a greater degree of cold to show the breath of the river than that of man. 

Apparently, the river is not enough warmer than the air to permit of its rising into it, i. e., evaporating, unless the air is of a very low temperature. When the air is say four or five degrees below, the water being + 32°, then there is a visible evaporation.

Is there the same difference, or some 40°, between the heat of the human breath and that air in which the moisture in the breath becomes visible in vapor? This has to do with the dew-point. Next, what makes the water of those open places thus warm ? and is it any warmer than elsewhere? 

There is considerable heat reflected from a sandy bottom where the water is shallow, and at these places it is always sandy and shallow, but I doubt if this actually makes the water warmer, though it may melt the more opaque ice which absorbs it. 

The fact that Holt Bend, which is deep, is late to freeze, being narrow, seems to prove it to be the swiftness of the water and not reflected heat that prevents freezing. The water is apparently kept warm under the ice and down next to the unfrozen earth, and by a myriad springs from within the bowels of the earth. 

I notice that, on the thin black ice lately formed on these open places, the breath of the water has made its way up through and is frozen into a myriad of little rosettes, which nearly cover its surface and make it white as with snow. You see the same on pretty thick ice. This occurs whenever the weather is coldest in the night or very early in the morning. 

Also, where these open places have lately closed, the ice for long distances over the thread of the river will often be heaved up roofwise a foot or more high and a rod wide, apparently pushed up by the heat of this breath beneath. 

As I come home, I observe much thin ice, just formed as it grows colder, drifting in gauze-like masses down these open places, just as I used to see it coming down the open river when it began to freeze. In this case it is not ice which formed last night, but which is even now forming. 

The musquash make a good deal of use of these open spaces. I have seen one four times in three several places this winter, or within three weeks. They improve all the open water they can get. They occasionally leave their clamshells upon the edges of them  now. 

This is all the water to reflect the sky now, whether amber or purple.I sometimes see the musquash dive in the midst of such a placid purple lake. 

Where the channel is broad the water is more sluggish and the ice accordingly thick, or it will answer just as well if the channel is deep, i. e., if its capacity is the same, though it be very narrow. The ice will be firm there too, e. g. at Ash Tree Rock (though it was lately open off the willows eight or ten rods above, being less deep and narrower); and even at the deeper hole next below the opening is not where it is deep, though very narrow, but half a dozen rods below, where it is much wider. 

To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them. 

The clouds were very remarkable this cold afternoon, about twenty minutes before sunset, consisting of very long and narrow white clouds converging in the horizon (melon-rind-wise) both in the west and east. They looked like the skeletons and backbones of celestial sloths, being pointed at each end, or even like porcupine quills or ivory darts sharp at each end. So long and slender, but pronounced, with a manifest backbone and marrow. It looked as if invisible giants were darting them from all parts of the sky at the setting sun. These were long darts indeed. 

Well underneath was an almost invisible rippled vapor whose grain was exactly at right angles with the former, all over the sky, yet it was so delicate that it did not prevent your seeing the former at all. Its filmy arrows all pointed athwart the others. I know that in fact those slender white cloud sloths were nearly parallel across the sky, but how much handsomer are the clouds because the sky is made to appear concave to us! How much more beautiful an arrangement of the clouds than parallel lines!

 At length those white arrows and bows, slender and sharp as they were, gathering toward a point in the west horizon, looked like flames even, forked and darting flames of ivory-white, and low in the west there was a piece of rainbow but little longer than it was broad. 

Taking the river in Concord in its present condition, it is, with one exception, only the shallowest places that are open. Suppose there were a dozen places open a few days ago, if it has grown much colder since, the deepest of them will be frozen over; and the shallowest place in all in Concord is the latest of all to freeze, e. g. at the junction. So, if you get into the river at this season, it is most likely to be at the shallowest places, they being either open or most thinly frozen over. That is one consolation for you.

 The exception is on the west side of the Holt (and the depth is one side from the opening), but that is on account of the narrowness of the river there. Indeed, the whole of Holt Bend is slow to freeze over, on account of the great narrowness and consequent swiftness of the stream there; but the two narrowest points of it are among the first to freeze over, because they are much the deepest, the rush of waters being either below or above them, where it is much shallower, though broader. 

To be safe a river should be straight and deep, or of nearly uniform depth. I do not remember any particular swiftness in the current above the railroad ash tree, where there is still an opening (seen December 30th), and it may be owing to the very copious springs in the high bank for twenty rods. There is not elsewhere so long a high and springy bank bounding immediately on the river in the town. To be sure, it is not deep.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 29, 1859

Immediately after sunrise . . . a little greenness in the ice, and also a little rose-color from the snow. . .. Apparently the ice is greenest when the sun is twenty or thirty minutes above the horizon. January 7, 1856 ("Returning, just before sunset, the few little patches of ice look green as I go from the sun (which is in clouds). It is probably a constant phenomenon in cold weather when the ground is covered with snow and the sun is low, morning or evening, and you are looking from it."); December 25, 1858 (“The sun getting low now, say at 3.30, I see the ice green, southeast.”); January 20, 1859 ("The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset."); February 12, 1860 ("Returning just before sunset, I see the ice beginning to be green...");
Open places in the main stream in Concord. See also  December 28, 1859 ("The open places in the river yesterday between Lee's Bridge and Carlisle Bridge");

On the thin black ice lately formed on these open places, the breath of the water has made its way up through and is frozen into a myriad of little rosettes. See December 21, 1854 ("What C. calls ice-rosettes, i.e. those small pinches of crystallized snow, . . .I think it is a sort of hoar frost on the ice. It was all done last night, for we see them thickly clustered about our skate-tracks on the river, where it was quite bare yesterday"); January 7, 1856 ("It is completely frozen at the Hubbard’s Bath bend now, — a small strip of dark ice, thickly sprinkled with those rosettes of crystals, two or three inches in diameter");  February 13, 1859 ("Ice which froze yesterday and last night is thickly and evenly strewn with fibrous frost crystals . . . sometimes arranged like a star or rosette, one for every inch or two; . . . I think that this is the vapor from the water which found its way up through the ice and froze in the night"). Compare January 1, 1856 ("On the ice at Walden are very beautiful great leaf crystals in great profusion . . .like a loose web of small white feathers springing from a tuft of down")

The cold must be between +1° and -6° in order that vapor may rise from these places.  See January 10, 1859 ("Four or five below at 3 P. M., — I see, as I go round the Island, much vapor blowing from a bare space in the river just below,")

It takes a greater degree of cold to show the breath of the river than that of man. See December 27, 1859 ("Grows cold in the evening, so that our breaths condense and freeze on the windows.")

To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them. See January 10, 1859 ("This is one of the phenomena of the winter sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you as you are facing the sun."); January 19, 1859 ("I see a rosy tinge like dust on the snow when I look directly toward the setting sun, but very little on the hills. Methinks this pink on snow (as well as blue shadows) requires a clear, cold evening."); Janusry 20, 1859 ("The green of the ice and water begins to be visible about half an hour before sunset. Is it produced by the reflected blue of the sky mingling with the yellow or pink of the setting sun?"); January 23, 1859 ("I notice on the ice where it slopes up eastward a little, a distinct rosy light (or pink) reflected from it generally, half an hour before sunset. This is a colder evening than of late, and there is so much the more of it."). See also notes to January 31, 1859 ("Pink light reflected from the low, flat snowy surfaces amid the ice on the meadows, just before sunset, is a constant phenomenon these clear winter days. , , , Perhaps the green seen at the same time in ice and water is produced by the general yellow or amber light of this hour, mingled with the blue of the reflected sky.")

The clouds were very remarkable this cold afternoon, about twenty minutes before sunset, consisting of very long and narrow white clouds converging in the horizon (melon-rind-wise) both in the west and east. See December 21, 1851 ("To-night, as so many nights within the year, the clouds arrange themselves in the east at sunset in long converging bars, according to the simple tactics of the sky. It is the melon-rind jig . . .converging bars inclose the day at each end as within a melon rind, and the morning and evening are one day"); February 19, 1852 ("Considering the melon-rind arrangement of the clouds, by an ocular illusion the bars appearing to approach each other in the east and west horizons, I am prompted to ask whether the melons will not be found to be in this direction oftenest")

To be safe a river should be straight and deep, or of nearly uniform depth. See December 30, 1855  ("I perceive that the cold respects the same places every winter. In the dark, or after a heavy snow, I know well where to cross the river most safely. Where the river is most like a lake, broad with a deep and muddy bottom, there it freezes first and thickest.")

The signs of cold weather./ Open places on the river.between Lee's Bridge and Carlisle Bridge

 December  28.

December 28, 2019

 In the morning the windows  are like ground glass (covered with frost), and we cannot see out. Sleds creak or squeak along the dry and hard snow-path. Crows come near the houses. These are among the signs of cold weather.

The open places in the river yesterday between Lee's Bridge and Carlisle Bridge were : 

• 1st, below Nut Meadow Brook, a rather shoal place; 
• 2d, at Clamshell Bend, longer; 
• 3d, at Hubbard's Bath Bend; 
• 31/2, was there not a little open at ash tree? '); 
• 4th, I think there was a short opening at Lee's Bend;[Or, rather, I think it was thinly frozen ?]
• 5th, from Monroe's to Merrick's pasture; 
• 6th, below junction to bridge; 
• 7th, below French's Rock;
•  8th, Barrett's Bar. 
• N. B. — Did not observe or examine between this and the shoal below the Holt.It was no doubt open at the last place and perhaps more. 
• There was no opening between the Holt shoal and Carlisle Bridge, for there was none on the 25th. 

The most solidly frozen portions are the broad and straight reaches. All broad bays are frozen hard. When you come to where the river is winding, there is shallower and swifter water — and open places as yet.

It is remarkable that the river should so suddenly contract at Pelham Pond. It begins to be Musketaquid there. 

The places where the river was certainly (i. e. except 4th) open yesterday were all only five feet or less in depth, according to my map, and all except 8th at bends or else below the mouth of a brook. And all places not more than five and a quarter feet deep were open (I am doubtful only about behind Rhodes) except above Holt Bend and perhaps Pad Island, or possibly none need be excepted. 

Hence, I should say, if you wish to ascertain where the river is five feet, or less than five feet, deep in Concord, wait till it is open for not more than half a dozen rods below Nut Meadow (it was probably 'some twenty the 27th), and then all open places will be five or less than five feet deep.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 28, 1859

In the morning the windows are like ground glass (covered with frost), and we cannot see out. See January 4, 1856 ("It is snapping cold this night (10 P. M.). I see the frost on the windows sparkle as I go through the passageway with a light ")'; February 1, 1860 ("Grows colder apace toward night. Frost forms on windows."); February 5, 1855 ("It was quite cold last evening, and I saw the scuttle window reflecting the lamp from a myriad brilliant points when I went up to bed."); February 17, 1860 ("Grows colder yet at evening, and frost forms on the windows.")

Crows come near the houses. These are among the signs of cold weather, See January 23, 1852 ("The snow is so deep and the cold so intense that the crows are compelled to be very bold in seeking their food, and come very near the houses in the village.”); December 27, 1853 (“The crows come nearer to the houses, alight on trees by the roadside, apparently being put to it for food.”) January 7, 1856 ("The cold weather has brought the crows, and for the first time this winter I hear them cawing amid the houses")

It is remarkable that the river should so suddenly contract at Pelham Pond. It begins to be Musketaquid there. See January 31, 1855 ("I skated up as far as the boundary between Wayland and Sudbury just above Pelham’s Pond, about twelve miles, . . . It was, all the way that I skated, a chain of meadows, with the muskrat-houses still rising above the ice.")

The open places in the river. See March 26, 1860 ("Tried by various tests, this season fluctuates more or less.. . .The river may be either only transiently closed, as in '52-'53 and '57-'58, or it may not be open entirely (up to pond) till April 4th.");  January 28. 1853 ("These two or three have been the coldest days of the winter, and the river is generally closed. . .and the sun-sparkles where the river is open are very cheerful to behold."); December 19, 1854 ("Last night was so cold that the river closed up almost everywhere, and made good skating where there had been no ice to catch the snow of the night before"); January 19, 1856 (“The only open place in the river between Hunt’s Bridge and the railroad bridge is a small space against Merrick’s pasture just below the Rock”); January 20, 1856 ("It is remarkable that the short strip in the middle below the Island yesterday should be the only'open place between Hunt’s Bridge and Hubbard’s, at least, -—-probably as far as Lee’s. The river has been frozen solidly ever since the 7th,");  January 24, 1856(“You may walk anywhere on the river now. Even the open space against Merrick’s, below the Rock, has been closed again . . .”); February 27, 1856 "(The river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks"); March 20, 1856 ("The river has just begun to open at Hubbard’s Bend. It has been closed there since January 7th, i. e. ten weeks and a half."); January 20, 1857 ("The river has been frozen everywhere except at the very few swiftest places since about December 18th, and everywhere since about January 1st."); January 23, 1858 ("I have not been able to walk up the North Branch this winter, nor along the channel of the South Branch at any time."); January 24, 1858 ("The river is broadly open, as usual this winter. . . . What is a winter without snow and ice in this latitude? ")

It is surprising what things the snow betrays.

December 27

High wind with more snow in the night. The snow is damp and covers the panes, darkening the room. At first I did not know that more snow had fallen, it was so drifted. Snowy ridges cross the village street and make it look as wild and bleak as a pass of the Rocky Mountains or the Sierra Nevada. 

P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond up meadows and river. 

The snow blows like spray, fifteen feet high, across the fields, while the wind roars in the trees as in the rigging of a vessel. It is altogether like the ocean in a storm. The snow blowing over the ice is like a vapor rising or curling from a roof.

Most plowed fields are quite bare, but I am surprised to find behind the walls on the south side, like a skulking company of rangers in ambuscade or regular troops that have retreated to another parallel, a solid column of snow six or eight feet deep. The wind, eddying through and over the wall, is scooping it out in fantastic forms, — shells and troughs and glyphs of all kinds. Sometimes the drift is pierced with many holes as big as one's fist, where the fine snow-drift is passing through like steam. As it flows over, it builds out eaves to the bank of razor sharpness. 

It is surprising what things the snow betrays. I had not seen a meadow mouse all summer, but no sooner does the snow come and spread its mantle over the earth than it is printed with the tracks of countless mice and larger animals. I see where the mouse has dived into a little hole in the snow, not larger than my thumb, by the side of a weed, and a yard further reappeared again, and so on alternately above and beneath. A snug life it lives. 

The crows come nearer to the houses, alight on trees by the roadside, apparently being put to it for food. I saw them yesterday also. 

The wind has now shaken the snow from the trees, and it lies in irregular little heaps on the snow beneath, except that there is a white ridge up and down their trunks on the northwest side, showing which side the storm came from, which, better than the moss, would enable one to find his way in the night. 

I went to hear the pond whoop, but did not hear much. 

I look far, but see no rainbow flocks in the sky. 

It is a true winter sunset, almost cloudless, clear, cold indigo-y along the horizon. The evening (?) star is seen shining brightly, before the twilight has begun. A rosy tint suffuses the eastern horizon. 

A TRUE WINTER SUNSET
December 27, 2017

The outline of the mountains is wonderfully distinct and hard, and they are a dark blue and very near. 

Wachusett looks like a right whale over our bow, plowing the continent, with his flukes well down. He has a vicious look, as if he had a harpoon in him.

I wish that I could buy at the shops some kind of india-rubber that would rub out at once all that in my writing which it now costs me so many perusals, so many months if not years, and so much reluctance, to erase.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 27, 1853

It is surprising what things the snow betrays. See February 16, 1854 ("That Indian trail on the hillside about Walden is revealed with remarkable distinctness to me standing on the middle of the pond, by the slight snow which had lodged on it forming a clear white line unobscured by weeds and twigs. (For snow is a great revealer not only of tracks made in itself, but even in the earth before it fell.)"); December 8, 1855 (" Let a snow come and clothe the ground and trees, and I shall see the tracks of many inhabitants now unsuspected")

The crows come nearer to the houses, alight on trees by the roadside, apparently being put to it for food. See January 23, 1852 ("The snow is so deep and the cold so intense that the crows are compelled to be very bold in seeking their food, and come very near the houses in the village."); January 7, 1856 ("The cold weather has brought the crows, and for the first time this winter I hear them cawing amid the houses. "); January 14, 1856 (" The crows are flitting about the houses and alight upon the elms. "); February 1, 1856 ("The crows have been remarkably bold, coming to eat the scraps cast out behind the houses. They alight in our yard")

There is a white ridge up and down their trunks on the northwest side, showing which side the storm came from, which, better than the moss, would enable one to find his way in the night. See note to December 23, 1851 ("There is a narrow ridge of snow, a white line, on the storm side of the stem of every exposed tree.")

It is a true winter sunset, almost cloudless, clear, cold indigo-y along the horizon. The evening star is seen shining brightly, before the twilight has begun.

The evening star seen 

shining brightly before the 

twilight has begun.

December 27, 1853 

See December 27, 1851 ("The man is blessed who every day is permitted to behold anything so pure and serene as the western sky at sunset . . . Venus - I suppose it is - is now the evening star, and very bright she is immediately after sunset in the early twilight."); Compare December 23, 1851 ("The evening star is shining brightly, and, beneath all, the west horizon is glowing red, . . . and I detect, just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon."); September 18, 1858 ("The cooler air is so clear that we see Venus plainly some time before sundown.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Serene as the Sky.

A rosy tint suffuses the eastern horizon. See December 9, 1856 ("A slight blush begins to suffuse the eastern horizon, and so the picture of the day is done and set in a gilded frame. Such is a winter eve."); January 10, 1859 ("This is one of the phenomena of the winter sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you as you are facing the sun.").  Compare January 14, 1852 ("I notice to-night, about sundown, that the clouds in the eastern horizon are the deepest indigo-blue of any I ever saw. Commencing with a pale blue or slate in the west, the color deepens toward the east.")

The mountains are a dark blue and very near. See November 13, 1851("The mountains are of an uncommonly dark blue to-day. Perhaps this is owing . . . to the greater clearness of the atmosphere, which brings them nearer")

December 27. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, December 27

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023

tinyurl.com/hdt531227

Our breaths condense.

December 27. 

Grows cold in the evening, so that our breaths condense and freeze on the windows.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 27, 1859

See January 30, 1854 ("The windows are all closed up with frost, as if they were ground glass.");December 28, 1859 ("In the morning the windows are like ground glass (covered with frost), and we cannot see out."); January 4, 1856 ("It is snapping cold this night (10 P. M.). I see the frost on the windows sparkle as I go through the passageway with a light ")'; February 1, 1860 ("Frost forms on windows."); February 5, 1855 ("It was quite cold last evening, and I saw the scuttle window reflecting the lamp from a myriad brilliant points when I went up to bed."); February 6, 1855 ("Frostwork keeps its place on the window within three feet of the stove all day in my chamber."); February 17, 1860 ("Grows colder yet at evening, and frost forms on the windows.")

The winter diet of muskrat.

December 26. 

P. M. — Skate to Lee's Bridge and there measure back, by pacing, the breadth of the river. 

After being uniformly overcast all the forenoon, still and moderate weather, it begins to snow very gradually, at first imperceptibly, this afternoon, — at first I thought I imagined it, — and at length begins to snow in earnest about 6 p. m., but lasts only a few minutes. 

I see a brute with a gun in his hand, standing motionless over a musquash-house which he has destroyed. I find that he has visited every one in the neighborhood of Fair Haven Pond, above and below, and broken them all down, laying open the interior to the water, and then stood watchful, close by, for the poor creature to show its head there for a breath of air. There lies the red carcass of one whose pelt he has taken on the spot, flat on the bloody ice. 

And for his afternoon's cruelty that fellow will be rewarded with a ninepence, perchance. When I consider what are the opportunities of the civilized man for getting ninepences and getting light, this seems to me more savage than savages are. Depend on it that whoever thus treats the musquash's house, his refuge when the water is frozen thick, he and his family will not come to a good end. 

So many of these houses being broken open, — twenty or thirty I see, — I look into the open hole, and find in it, in almost every instance, many pieces of the white root with the little leaf-bud curled up which I take to be the yellow lily root, — the leaf- bud unrolled has the same scent with the yellow lily. There will be half a dozen of these pointed buds, more or less green, coming to a point at the end of the root. 

Also I see a little coarser, what I take to be green leaf -stalk of the pontederia, for I see a little of the stipule sheathing the stalk from within it? 

The first unrolls and off course it is yellow lily. In one hole there was a large quantity of this root, and these buds attached or bitten off, the root generally five or six eighths inch in diameter and one to four inches long. I think, therefore, that this root must be their principal food at this time. 

If you open twenty cabins you will find it in at least three quarters of them, and nothing else, unless a very little pontederia leaf-stem. 

I see no fresh clamshells in them, and places, nor are they probably deposited in a heap under the ice. It may be, however, that the shells are opened in this hole and then dropped in the water near by!! By eating or killing at least so many lily buds they must thin out that plant considerably. 

Twice this winter I have noticed a musquash floating in a placid open place in the river when it was frozen for a mile each side, looking at first like a bit of stump or frozen meadow, but showing its whole upper outline from nose to end of tail; perfectly still till he observed me, then suddenly diving and steering under the ice toward some cabin's entrance or other retreat half a dozen or more rods off. 

As some of the tales of our childhood, the invention of some Mother Goose, will haunt us when we are grown up, so the race itself still believes in some of the fables with which its infancy was amused and imposed on, e. g. the fable of the cranes and pygmies, which learned men endeavored to believe or explain in the last century. 

Aristotle, being almost if not quite the first to write systematically on animals, gives them, of course, only popular names, such as the hunters, fowlers, fishers, and farmers of his day used. He used no scientific terms. But he, having the priority and having, as it were, created science and given it its laws, those popular Greek names, even when the animal to which they were applied cannot be identified, have been in great part preserved and make those learned far-fetched and commonly unintelligible names of genera to-day. His History of Animals has thus become a very storehouse of scientific nomenclature.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 26, 1859

By eating or killing at least so many lily buds they must thin out that plant considerably. See April 10, 1855 ("I see much yellow lily root afloat, which the muskrats have dug up and nibbled.")

The pond began to boom or whoop.

December 25. 

P. M. — Skated to Fair Haven and above. 

At seven this morning the water had already oozed out at the sides of the river and flowed over the ice. It appears to be the result of this bridging of the river in the night and so obstructing the channel or usual outlet. 

About 4 p. m. the sun sunk behind a cloud, and the pond began to boom or whoop. I noticed the same yesterday at the same hour at Flint's. It was perfectly silent before. The weather in both cases clear, cold, and windy. It is a sort of belching, and, as C. said, is somewhat frog-like. I suspect it did not continue to whoop long either night. It is a very pleasing phenomenon, so dependent on the altitude of the sun. 

December 25, 2019

When I go to Boston, I go naturally straight through the city down to the end of Long Wharf and look off, for I have no cousins in the back alleys. The water and the vessels are novel and interesting. 

What are our maritime cities but the shops and dwellings of merchants, about a wharf projecting into the sea, where there is a convenient harbor, on which to land the produce of other climes and at which to load the exports of our own? 

Next in interest to me is the market where the produce of our own country is collected. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, New Orleans, and many others are the names of wharves projecting into the sea. They are good places to take in and to discharge a cargo. Everybody in Boston lives at No. so-and-so, Long Wharf. 

I see a great many barrels and fig-drums and piles of wood for umbrella-sticks and blocks of granite and ice, etc., and that is Boston. 

Great piles of goods and the means of packing and conveying them, much wrapping-paper and twine, many crates and hogsheads and trucks, that is Boston. The more barrels, the more Boston. 

The museums and scientific societies and libraries are accidentals. They gather around the barrels, to save carting. 

Apparently the ice is held down on the sides of the river by being frozen to the shore and the weeds, and so is overflowed there, but in the middle it is lifted up and makes room for the tide. 

I saw, just above Fair Haven Pond, two or three places where, just before the last freezing, when the ice was softened and partly covered with sleet, there had been a narrow canal, about eight inches wide, quite across the river from meadow to meadow. I am constrained to believe, from the peculiar character of it on the meadow end, where in one case it divided and crossed itself, that it was made either by muskrats or otters or minks repeatedly crossing there. One end was for some distance like an otter trail in the soft upper part of the ice, not worn through.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 25, 1853

 Skated to Fair Haven and above. See ; December 5, 1853 (" Fair Haven Pond is skimmed completely over."); December 7, 1856 ("Take my first skate to Fair Haven Pond”); December 20, 1854 ( P. M. — Skate to Fair Haven.”); December 24, 1853 ("Skated across Flint's Pond.")

About 4 p. m. the sun sunk behind a cloud, and the pond began to boom or whoop. I noticed the same yesterday at the same hour at Flint's. It is a very pleasing phenomenon, so dependent on the altitude of the sun. See February 12, 1854 ("The pond does not thunder every night, and I do not know its law exactly. I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering, . . . [y]et it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should"); December 25, 1858 (“I stayed later to hear the pond crack, but it did not much. ”)

A conversation with Therien, the woodchopper.

December 24. 

The rain of yesterday concluded with a whitening of snow last evening, the third thus far. To day is cold and quite windy. 

P. M. — To the field in Lincoln which I surveyed for Weston the 17th. 

Walden almost entirely open again. 

Skated across Flint's Pond; for the most part smooth but with rough spots where the rain had not melted the snow. 

From the hill beyond I get an arctic view northwest. The mountains are of a cold slate-color. It is as if they bounded the continent toward Behring's Straits. 

In Weston's field, in springy land on the edge of a swamp, I counted thirty-three or four of those large silvery-brown cocoons within a rod or two, and probably there are many more about a foot from the ground, commonly on the main stem — though sometimes on a branch close to the stem — of the alder, sweet-fern, brake, etc., etc. 

The largest are four inches long by two and a half, bag-shaped and wrinkled and partly concealed by dry leaves, — alder, ferns, etc., — attached as if sprinkled over them. This evidence of cunning in so humble a creature is affecting, for I am not ready to refer it to an intelligence which the creature does not share, as much as we do the prerogatives of reason. This radiation of the brain. The bare silvery cocoons would otherwise be too obvious. 

The worm has evidently said to itself: "Man or some other creature may come by and see my casket. I will disguise it, will hang a screen before it." 

Brake and sweet-fern and alder leaves are not only loosely sprinkled over it and dangling from it, but often, as it were, pasted close upon and almost incorporated into it. 

Saw Therien yesterday afternoon chopping for Jacob Baker in the rain. I heard his axe half a mile off, and also saw the smoke of his fire, which I mistook for a part of the mist which was drifting about. 

I asked him where he boarded. At Shannon's.

He asked the price of board and said I was a grass boarder, i. e. not a regular one. 

Asked him what time he started in the morning. The sun was up when he got out of the house that morning. He heard Flint's Pond whooping like cannon the moment he opened the door, but sometimes he could see stars after he got to his chopping-ground. 

He was working with his coat off in the rain. 

He said he often saw gray squirrels running about and jumping from tree to tree. There was a large nest of leaves close by. 

That morning he saw a large bird of some kind. 

He took a French paper to keep himself in practice, — not for news; he said he didn't want news. He had got twenty- three or twenty-four of them, had got them bound and paid a dollar for it, and would like to have me see it. He hadn't read it half; there was a great deal of reading in it, by gorry.

He wanted me to tell him the meaning of some of the hard words. 

How much had he cut? He wasn't a-going to kill himself. He had got money enough. 

He cut enough to earn his board. A man could not do much more in the winter. 

He used the dry twigs on the trees to start his fire with, and some shavings which he brought in his pocket. He frequently found some fire still in the morning. 

He laid his axe by a log and placed another log the other side of it. I said he might have to dig it out of a snow drift, but he thought it would not snow. 

Described a large hawk killed at Smith's (which had eaten some hens); its legs "as yellow as a sovereign;" apparently a goshawk. 

He has also his beetle and wedges and whetstone. 

In the town hall this evening, my spruce tree, one of the small ones in the swamp, hardly a quarter the size of the largest, looked double its size, and its top had been cut off for want of room. It was lit with candles, but the starlit sky is far more splendid to-night than any saloon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  December 24, 1853

A whitening of snow last evening, the third thus far. See  December 24,1850 ("the fine, dry snow blown over the surface of the frozen fields looks like steam curling up, as from a wet roof when the sun comes out after a rain."); December 24,1851 ("Now and long since the birds' nests have been full of snow."); December 24, 1854 ("Some three inches of snow fell last night and this morning,"); December 24, 1856 ("More snow in the night and to-day, making nine or ten inches")

Walden almost entirely open again. Skated across Flint's Pond. See December 4, 1853 ("Flint's Pond only skimmed a little at the shore, like the river."). Compare  December 27, 1852 (" Not a particle of ice in Walden to-day. Paddled across it. I took my new boat out. A black and white duck on it, Flint's and Fair Haven being frozen up.."); December 11, 1854 ("I find Flint’s frozen to-day,and how long?");  December 9, 1856 ("Yesterday I met Goodwin bringing a fine lot of pickerel from Flint's, which was frozen at least four inches thick. This is, no doubt, owing solely to the greater depth of Walden."); December 24, 1856 ("Am surprised to find Walden still open in the middle. . "); December 24, 1858 ("Those two places in middle of Walden not frozen over yet, ..."); December 24, 1859 (“There is, in all, an acre or two in Walden not yet frozen, though half of it has been frozen more than a week. ”);

From the hill beyond I get an arctic view northwest. The mountains are of a cold slate-color. See September 12, 1851 ("To the Three Friends' Hill beyond Flint's Pond. . . I go to Flint's Pond for the sake of the mountain view from the hill beyond, looking over Concord. I have thought it the best, especially in the winter, which I can get in this neighborhood. It is worth the while to see the mountains in the horizon once a day. "); October 22, 1857 ("Look from the high hill, just before sundown, over the pond. The mountains are a mere cold slate-color. But what a perfect crescent of mountains we have in our northwest horizon!")

In Weston's field I counted thirty-three or four of those large silvery-brown cocoons. See December 17, 1853 ("While surveying for Daniel Weston in Lincoln to-day, see a great many — maybe a hundred — silvery-brown cocoons");  February 19, 1854 (" the light ash-colored cocoons of the A. Promethea, with the withered and faded leaves wrapped around them "); January 6, 1855 ("Saw one of those silver-gray cocoons which are so securely attached by the silk being wound round the leaf-stalk and the twig.")

This evidence of cunning in so humble a creature is affecting, for I am not ready to refer it to an intelligence which the creature does not share.See February 19, 1854 ("Each and all such disguises and other resources remind us that not some poor worm's instinct merely, as we call it, but the mind of the universe rather, which we share, has been intended upon each particular object. All the wit in the world was brought to bear on each case to secure its end.”)

Saw Therien yesterday afternoon chopping for Jacob Baker in the rain. See July 14, 1845 ("Alek Therien, he called himself; a Canadian now, a woodchopper, a post-maker; makes fifty posts—holes them, i. e.—in a day; and who made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught. And he too has heard of Homer, and if it were not for books, would not know what to do rainy days."); February 5, 1855 ("Found Therien cutting down the two largest chestnuts in the wood-lot behind where my house was."); December 29, 1853 ("I asked Therien yesterday if he was satisfied with himself.")

He wasn't a-going to kill himself. He had got money enough. He cut enough to earn his board. See Walden ("He wasn’t a-going to hurt himself. He didn’t care if he only earned his board.")

He took a French paper to keep himself in practice. See Walden ("I know a woodchopper, of middle age, who takes a French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, but to “keep himself in practice,” he being a Canadian by birth; and when I ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his English. ")

He has also his beetle.  See March 15, 1857 ("An indispensable piece of woodcraft."); December 29, 1853 ("The woodchopper to-day is the same man that Homer refers to, and his work the same. He, no doubt, had his beetle and wedge and whetstone then, carried his dinner in a pail or basket, and his liquor in a bottle, and caught his woodchucks, and cut and corded, the same.")

My spruce tree. See December 22, 1853 ("Got a white spruce for a Christmas-tree for the town out of the spruce swamp,")